"We didn't even know Hew Lingard knew Miss Oglander!"
"And we only knew quite lately that you were related to General Lingard."
Tom Pache grinned. "Father was his guardian, and would go on guardianing him after he was grown up. He and my father had a row—years ago. But of course we made it up with him when he blossomed out into a famous character. Mother wrote and asked him to stay with us last time he was in England. He wouldn't come then. But the other day he wrote her quite a decent letter telling her of his engagement. They don't want it announced—I can't think why——"
"I suppose they both hate fuss," said Wantele briefly. "We tried to get Jane here before to-night—but she's nursing a sick friend, and she can't come for another week. By the way, I've forgotten to ask how you like your motor?"
"Ripping!" said young Pache briefly. "Unluckily Patty insists on driving it, and father weakly lets her do it."
Dinner was announced, and the four curiously assorted couples went into the dining-room.
While avoiding looking at him across the round table, Wantele was intently conscious of the presence of the man who was to become Jane Oglander's husband.
Hew Lingard was absolutely unlike what he had expected him to be. Wantele had never cared for soldiers, while admitting unwillingly that there must be in the great leaders qualities very different from those which adorned his few military acquaintances. He had thought to see a trim, well-groomed—hateful but expressive phrase!—good-looking man. He saw before him a loosely-built, powerful figure and a dark, clean-shaven face, of which the dominant features were the strong jaw and secretive-looking mouth, which seemed rather to recall the wild soldier of fortune of another epoch than the shrewd strategist and coldly able organiser Lingard had shown himself to be.
Newspaper readers had been told how extraordinary was Lingard's personal influence over his men. An influence exerted not only over his own soldiers, but over the friendly native tribesmen.
Wantele, who read widely and who remembered what he read, recalled a phrase which had caught his fancy, a phrase invented to meet a very different case: